


Footprints at High Tide

by CaffieneKitty



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Antichrist, Episode Tag, Episode: s05e06 I Believe The Children Are Our Future, Gen, Leaving Home, Memory Alteration, POV Minor Character, Psychic Abilities, child running away to protect family, dubious depiction of an Australian accent and speech patterns for an OC, plot-hole patching and handwaving
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-10-20
Updated: 2009-10-20
Packaged: 2017-12-30 06:06:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1015018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaffieneKitty/pseuds/CaffieneKitty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jesse has some loose ends to tie up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Footprints at High Tide

**Author's Note:**

> Will no doubt be AU if the character comes back in canon. 
> 
> _Originally posted October 20 2009_

Jesse looked out at the wide blue ocean, sneakered toes sinking into the warm sand. Waves rolled in all along the shore, and people were surfing.

_No one knows me here. No one will know I'm here at all._

People walked past chattering in unfamiliar accents. A few looked at him funny, but he supposed that was because he wasn't really dressed for the beach.

_I was in Nebraska just a second ago._

The living room was a wreck. His Mom and Dad would freak.

His Mom and Dad would freak more when they saw he was missing.

Jesse clapped a hand over his mouth, standing on the Australian beach. _Mom and Dad are going to see all that downstairs and think something horrible happened to me! They'll think I was kidnapped, they'll put up posters and be on the news and everything._

_The demons will see. The demons will come for them!_

Jesse almost went back then, but something told him if he did he wouldn't get another chance to leave. He turned and walked along the side of a weathered boardwalk.

_They need to forget about me. Everyone in town needs to forget about me. It's the only way they'll be safe._

But the demon that had been in his mom, his birth mom, that demon knew where he lived and had gotten away.

He had to go back. He had to get them out of there. Unless...

_Can I make everyone forget me? Even that demon?_

She'd said he could do anything. They'd all said he was powerful. He'd turned a grown-up into a doll, made an earthquake...

 _I can do it. I can do anything._ Jesse felt the thought settle into his mind as a certainty. He ducked under the boardwalk, sat down and began.

It was a funny feeling, like he was flying a kite, only the kite's in Nebraska and he's in Australia; even though he can hear the seagulls and waves, smell the seaweed, feel the sand creaking under his legs, the kite in Nebraska is him.

Jesse floated over the sleeping town. He knew where his house was, but he couldn't go there yet. He floated over the town, listening to people's dreams and memories.

There's his teacher Mr. Buckley, and his teacher from the year before, Miss Goldberg. There's the old man that owns the corner store that always counted out an extra gummy worm from the jars behind the counter. There's his swim instructor from two summers ago, Blake; memories of swimming in the community pool and talking about the sea and tall waves and standing on a board, king of the ocean.

There's Jenny and Greg and Molly and Tien and Harvey and the quiet kid with glasses that always laughed at his jokes even when they were really stupid. There's the kid that called him names when he got on the bus. There's the Pastor, there's his Sunday school teacher. There's the lady with the big mean dog. There's Dr Ghurpa with his broad smile.

He could feel their memories of him; parts of himself he'd never known he'd left behind. He stretched and felt a hundred more from people he didn't know remembered him, people he didn't even remember; little things that made up who he was, living in other people's memories. He grabbed them all, pulled them back into himself.

One quick tug and all of Alliance, Nebraska forgot Jesse Turner had ever existed. He felt the memories left behind adjust themselves, finding ways of explaining documents and objects without his further influence, ripples stilling on a pond.

An echo of a memory caught his mind; the dark cloud of the demon he'd talked to, heading due west. Twisting in a way he couldn't describe, he sped up to it, beside it. It was a greasy, queasy kind of mind, full of horrible things and betrayal. Reaching inside it for the memory of himself burned. Pickle juice in the eye.

_I can do anything. You said. So forget me._

And just like that the memories the demon held snapped out, demon wailing, back to Jesse. The cloud's path drifted and Jesse veered off home.

_Last, mom and dad._

He could see his house. The Winchesters and their scary friend were leaving with his birth mom. Jesse took what memories she had of him. Sam and Dean felt funny though; spiky like a cactus made of light. The man in the trenchcoat was made of light too, and Jesse didn't quite understand how to make that light forget, because he couldn't see where the memories of him were.

He wanted them to remember him though. He wanted someone to, and he could feel that the things that wanted him wanted them too. If they remembered him, they wouldn't be in any more danger than they already were.

Inside, his parents were still sleeping. He watched them, the seagulls and waves fading from his ears. They were full of memory, kaleidoscopes of his life. Jesse looked into his parents and saw...

Bringing Jesse home, joy, joy, worry, are they doing this right, first steps, first words, first haircut, first, first, first, all his firsts. School and marks and shopping, and watching him sleep, smoothing his hair from his forehead, sick with chicken pox, counting the freckles on his nose. Jesse doesn't like peas unless they're with carrots, he likes vinegar on his beans, he'll only eat broccoli if it's the whole tree and he can chop it down like a lumberjack, he likes white-bread-mustard-fried-spam sandwiches with tomato on the side cut into half-moons.

Jesse's growing and needs a new coat, new shoes maybe a bigger bike for Christmas. Sick feelings, leaving him alone, he's a good kid, have to work to meet the mortgage, the bills, keep a roof over his head, give him a good life. Country better than city, no dingy apartment, fresh air, watch him running and rolling in waving tall grass, showing Jesse how to make the grass squawk. Maybe get a cow, some chickens, let Jesse live on a real farm, he'll have this place when we're gone, after high school, college, doctor-lawyer-engineer-architect how can one small person have so much future.

Love. Love, threaded all through every memory, like a bonfire burning.

Jesse backed off. His parents were all the memories of him. Everything he was echoed back to him from them.

If they remembered it, any of it, they might be killed. Sam and Dean's dad had been killed by a demon. Jesse didn't want his parents to die.

The feeling of sitting on sand faded away. _Forget me. Forget me. I don't exist._

His mother twitched in her sleep, and his father frowned.

_Forget me. Please. You have to forget me!_

Jesse pulled, and the memories uprooted, snapping into him, staggering him. His mother shook and his father rolled towards her in his sleep, holding her, frowning. Jesse watched his parents' memories sealing over, finding painful reasons for his room, his toys, his pictures. Memories of him disappeared like water dropped into a frying pan to test if it's hot enough for pancakes.

Their memories were still healing over when Jesse allowed himself to snap back to where he lay under the boardwalk on an Australian beach.

"Hey, you right?"

Jesse sat up and blinked. A young man with blond hair crouched next to the boardwalk, staring at him. "I'm fine."

"You need to get home, mate. It'll be dark soon. Can't sleep under there anyway, tide's coming in."

"I-" Jesse was about to say he didn't have a home, but he could make one for himself here. He could have anything he wanted.

What he wanted was Alliance, Nebraska, his bed, his family, and not to know anything about what he really was.

"Hey, hey, no worries!" the man said, patting Jesse on the foot. "You lost? You're a bit young to be going walkabout."

Jesse sniffled. "I need- I don't have anywhere to stay."

The man shielded his eyes from the setting sun. "You sound like an American?"

"Yeah."

"How'd you get so lost here? Where's your family? Are you on holiday?"

Jesse told the man's mind to make up a story he'd believe that would make him stop asking questions, too tired to bother coming up with something himself.

"Bloody hell." The man's face clouded, and he held out a hand. "Come on. We'll get you a place to stay for tonight, get you some tea, see if we can't get you straightened away in the morning."

Jesse crawled out from under the boardwalk, bone-tired, but he knew that nothing would be getting straightened out in the morning.

In the morning Jesse would make sure the nice man forgot him too.

\- - -  
(that's it. meh.)


End file.
